Ancestral, Embodied, and Contested Memories: Teaching Dance/History in the Information Age

Auteurs

DOI :

https://doi.org/10.58786/rbed.2025.v4.n8.69754

Mots-clés :

pedagogy, dance history, african diaspora

Résumé

In this essay I reflect on notions of dance and of history which frame past and potential pedagogical approaches to dance history as taught in tertiary education. Drawing on my own embodied history, feminist ethnography as a theoretical paradigm, as well as the work of scholars such as Anthea Kraut and Yvonne Daniel, I suggest modes of caring for sacred, social and theatrical dance histories that can open up global conversations which are more historically accurate if they are brave enough to embrace multiplicity, contradictions, and the unofficial archives where dance is often held.

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Biographie de l'auteur

Rainy Demerson, Spelman College, Georgia, Atlanta, Estados Unidos.

Rainy Demerson is an Associate Professor of Dance Performance and Choreography at Spelman College. She has trained extensively in California and New York, as well as at L’ecole des Sables in Senegal, Teatro Nacional de Cuba, and Escola de Dança da FUNCEB in Brazil. Her academic and embodied research seeks to bridge traditional and experimental approaches to navigating the web of African diasporic performance philosophies and methods. She holds degrees from the Dance Education MA at New York University, the MFA in Dance at Hollins University and the PhD in Critical Dance Studies at University of California Riverside, where she completed her dissertation, Decolonial Moves: Re-Membering Black Women in South African Contemporary Dance. She has been on faculty at Lindenwood University, El Paso Community College, Crafton Hills College, Scripps College, California Polytechnic University Pomona, California State University San Marcos and The University of the West Indies. As a choreographer/performer, she has shared her work in The USA, Mexico, Barbados, Trinidad, South Africa and Senegal. As a scholar, she’s published in several distinguished journals and anthologies and currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of the academic journal Dance Chronicle.

Références

BEAMAN, Patricia Leigh. World Dance Cultures: from Ritual to Spectacle. New York: Routledge Press, 2017.

DANIEL, Yvonne. Dancing Wisdom: embodied knowledge in Haitian Vodou, Cuban Yoruba,and Bahian Candomblé. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2005.

GESCHIERE, Peter. The perils of belonging: autochthony, citizenship, and exclusion in Africa and Europe. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009.

SHEA MURPHY, Jacqueline Shea. The people have never stopped dancing: Native American modern dance histories. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007.

CHECK your body at the door. Director: Sally Sommer and Michael Schwartz. Producer: National Endowment for the Arts/Dance Heritage Initiative. 1999. (60 min), color.

THEY are we. Director: Emma Christopher . Producer: Emma Christopher and Sergio Leyva Seiglie. Icarus Films, 2014. ( 90 min), color.

SCHECHNER, Richard, interviewed by Diana Taylor. (2001) https://scalar.usc.edu/nehvectors/wips/richard-schechner-what-is-performance-studies-2001-

Accessed November 18, 2024.

LEWIS, JANINE, and NGOBENI, GIFTER. Presentation at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, 2022.

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Publiée

2026-02-02

Comment citer

DEMERSON, Rainy. Ancestral, Embodied, and Contested Memories: Teaching Dance/History in the Information Age. Revue Brésilienne des Études en Danse, [S. l.], v. 4, n. 8, p. 67–78, 2026. DOI: 10.58786/rbed.2025.v4.n8.69754. Disponível em: https://www.revistas.ufrj.br/index.php/rbed/article/view/69754. Acesso em: 3 oct. 2026.

Numéro

Vol. 4 No 8 (2025): Enseignement de l'histoire de la danse: pédagogies, méthodes et programmes

Rubrique

Articles / Dossier

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